i/o THE BACTERIA IN ASIATIC CHOLERA. [CH. 



In the mucus-flakes were large numbers of lymph-corpuscles, 

 some perfect and small, others swollen up ; many of them 

 contain the small straight bacilli in great numbers ; besides 

 these there were numerous coherent masses entirely com- 

 posed of the small bacilli, but comma-bacilli were also 

 everywhere to be found, though the small bacilli were in 

 the majority. Cultivations made on linen from these 

 mucus-flakes yielded after twenty-four hours large crops 

 both of comma-bacilli and of the small straight bacilli.] 



These bacilli are of extremely small size, about half to 

 two-thirds the thickness of the typical comma-bacilli, and 

 about one-third their length. They are straight and appear 

 pointed at each end ; generally they are single, but occasion- 

 ally they form a chain of two elements. In the well-preserved 

 mucus corpuscles they lie closely packed together, appar- 

 ently all single ; in the large swollen corpuscles there are 

 some in couples ; and amongst those occurring free around 

 and between the lymph-corpuscles and epithelial cells there 

 are a good many in couples and in small groups. It is not at 

 all a rare occurrence to meet with mucus-flakes from rice- 

 water stools in which the corpuscles were found almost com- 

 pletely disintegrated ; there were nevertheless found many 

 groups of the small bacilli, from six to twenty and more in 

 each group. 



Two questions present themselves in connection with these 

 lymph-corpuscles; (i) where do they come from? and (2) 

 where do they get the bacilli from ? There can be no diffi- 

 culty in answering the first. It is well known that in all 

 those places where the highly-vascular lymphatic tissue 

 reaches the free epithelium of a mucous membrane, e.g. the 

 tonsils of the palate and pharynx, the lymph-follicles of the 

 pyloric end of the stomach and the duodenal part of the in- 

 testine, the solitary andagminated lymph-follicles of the ileum, 



